Salmon Arm tattoo artist’s free salmon-arm ink a hit

A tattoo of a salmon that looks like an arm has been inked onto roughly 50 people at a tattoo parlour in Salmon Arm, with more requests for the artwork still coming in.

Salmon Arm tattooist Cameron Morris is the designer behind the comical tattoo and owner of Pinz Tattoo located in the heart of the small city.

He started doing the tattoos for free on Fridays more than a year ago to promote his business and “have some fun.”

“I was curious to know if I did this for free how many people would get one,” he said. “I was a little nervous because I thought maybe just a few people would want it, but maybe thousands would. Luckily, it turned out to be about the right amount.”  

The design combines a salmon with the tail in the shape of an arm and hand.

“People sometimes get Salmon Arm tattoos and I’ve seen them done a few different ways, it’s an interesting name,” he said. “When you think of Salmon Arm and you think of a salmon and an arm.

“I’ve seen one with a man with salmon for arms and some of salmon with human arms, I’ve seen a few of them.”

Born and raised in Golden, Cameron started working as an apprentice tattooist at Pinz Tattoo two decades ago. He fell in love with Salmon Arm and bought the shop a couple of years ago.

“Salmon Arm is amazing and has really become my home,” he said. “I met my wife here and started a family. We’ve had so amazing clients over the years including locals and lots that travel to see us.

“I’ve had people tell me they’re also not originally from here but have made it their home so they wanted the tattoo to commemorate that.”

Morris didn’t intend for the free Salmon Arm tattoo campaign to last this long, and he still has more requests coming in.

“Originally, I had to set some boundaries on it,” he said. “I was going to do one per week, and you can’t change the design but you can flip it so it looks good where it’s placed.

“The plan was they’d be free until I ran out of bookings but they kept coming which is why it went on for so long.”

A few days ago, Morris finally finished the last free tattoo and he’ll be charging for them. He said he will be tattooing the design onto himself in the near future to join the fun.

Salmon Arm is located on one of four arms of Shuswap Lake that stretch to the west, north, northeast and south. Salmon Arm is the southern arm and is named after the large runs of salmon that traveled up the creeks in the area that empty into the lake.